001/* 002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one 003 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file 004 * distributed with this work for additional information 005 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file 006 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the 007 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance 008 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at 009 * 010 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 011 * 012 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, 013 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an 014 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY 015 * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the 016 * specific language governing permissions and limitations 017 * under the License. 018 * 019 */ 020 021package org.apache.directory.server.dns.util; 022 023 024/** 025 * An interface that allows an Enum to be converted to another type, such as an 026 * integer or long. Useful in cases where the Java assigned ordinal just isn't 027 * reliable enough or is unable to represent the values we need.<p> 028 * 029 * Implementers should also implement (though there is no way of requiring it) 030 * a static method for taking the conversion the other way: 031 * 032 * <code> 033 * public static Enum convert (K value); 034 * </code> 035 * 036 * @param <K> 037 * @author <a href="mailto:dev@directory.apache.org">Apache Directory Project</a> 038 */ 039public interface EnumConverter<K> 040{ 041 /** 042 * Convert the enum to another type. 043 * 044 * @return The other type. 045 */ 046 K convert(); 047}